Fred posted over the weekend about deficit reduction. What we really need though is not cutting within the existing system, but rather restructuring government for the age of the Internet. We currently seem to be in the habit of piling patches upon poorly working systems. It is as if we were trying to cope with decades of technical debt with a couple of maintenance releases as opposed to a fundamental refactoring.
Where we should look instead is at what is possible in the private sector. If Vizio can become the leader in the US HDTV market with 300 employees globally, then how big does government have to be? I firmly believe that we can have “more governance” (broader role) while at the same time having “less government” (fewer dollars). So asking for net neutrality regulation and a smaller FCC at the same time are not at odds with each other.
The big question is how to get there from here. What is the equivalent of refactoring for government? Which party represents this view? Probably none right now, but there might be individual candidates. Unfortunately, we only have very limited competition in government – at least there are different states. I am hoping that the severe state budget crises are going to allow a governor to really restructure for what should be possible today. I will try to write more about how I believe this should work in future posts.
